Last week was our Annual Meeting and we celebrated three years of Buns & Roses WI.

And rather than just have all the business and a usual session, we decided to go all-out for a birthday party entitled Three is the Magic Number.

We had cake, party food, pass the parcel, a colouring competition and a magician!

It was super fun but also a bit sad as one of our secretaries, Zoe, had decided to step down due to work commitments. But we also have several new people on our main and sub comittees and lots of fun things planned for the future.

Our meeting for March was House of (Cam)Pain, which was focused on the WI's campaigning efforts and how we can all work together to make a difference.

To help us understand more about the resolutions process and how these shape the campaigns the WI creates and gets involved in, we invited along Gillian Swift, Chairman of the Public Affairs commttee at the West Yorkshire Federation.

Gill explains to us how resolutions are put forward, shortlisted, debated and voted on, and how the results go on to form campaigns that the WI as a whole gets involved in.

We heard about past resolutions and how they are still having an impact, and found out what we can all be doing to get involved in the process.

Recently, the WI has been working hard to highlight the importance of libraries, and previous efforts have focused on issues such as domestic violence, legal aid, mental health and prisoners, food labelling, waste, honeybess, fishing .... You name it, the WI has been involved at some level to help ensure that women's voices are heard loud and clear!

It was very interesting to find out just how much influence the WI can have. After all, who can ignore 210,000 women talking to them?!

You can find out more on how the WI is helping to improve lives for all by going to the WI Campaigns and Projects page.